Many Internet search engines now have personal welcome screens for users when they log into their personal search engine accounts, e.g., through My Yahoo!® accounts. These personal home screens can be personalized by format, layout, specifying user topics, subjects of interest and by indicating preferences for online media content sources (e.g., NY Times.com, CNN.com) to display on the user's home page. The user's home page can then be updated daily, weekly, or on any other time interval specified by a the user or administrator to retrieve relevant content from sources specified by the user or administrator. In order to personalize user web pages, content sources must be mined and the content therein must be collected into a content pool.
Delivering quality and relevant content to internet service provider content pools and then to users who desire personalized content is a challenging problem. There are thousands of online content sources such as news sources, multimedia sources, blogs and other web pages that can potentially be mined for relevant content to deliver to a content pool. Current technologies permit limited personalization of user pages based on users or administrators statically identifying content sources. Current systems can retrieve the content from these sources to fill a content pool that can be used to deliver content to a user.
However, user interests, web pages, content sources, topics and trends change quickly online and often content collected from static sources may not always represent the best quality content, the hottest trending topics, news, multimedia, gossip and information that is gaining attention or popularity online. Traditional content sources are typically updated based the schedule, rules, themes and interests of the administrators hosting the particular content sources to which a user subscribes. For example, sites such as NYTimes.com™, CNN.com™, ESPN.com™ and others have schedules and rules set by the administrators of their content pages that must be adhered to when compiling and posting content to their respective web pages. Even “real-time” news sites such as Reuters or Associated Press which collect and display news at higher levels of frequency are limited by the number of authorized contributors to these sources.
Social media is quickly gaining popularity as an alternative universe for information. Users are spending more time creating personal social media pages through accounts such as Twitter™, Facebook™, Reddit™, LinkedIn™ and others. According to some estimates, there are over 1 billion Facebook users, over half a billion Twitter accounts, over 200 million LinkedIn accounts and over 40 million Reddit users. According to one estimate, Twitter alone registers over 250 million tweets a day.
Social media sites, while historically a means to connect with friends, acquaintances or followers are now increasingly being used to share content, news, articles and information that is either the original work of the user or gathered from other sources. Recognizing the popularity of social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. even companies and organizations are creating their own social media pages and posting content, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or other indicators from other websites. The traffic on social media sites and the content generated therein is rapidly increasing. Given the sheer volume of users of social media sites, the dynamic and evolving natures of these sites and the volume of content, postings, URLs, other content indicators and information shared on these sites, social media sites offer an excellent source of content for content personalization systems.
It would be a distinct advantage over traditional means of collecting content for any content personalization system to harness the information generated by users or curators of social media who are now acting as editorial sources for content. While the volume of users, curators and content of social media sites provides a vast array of potential sources from which to enrich a content pool, any content personalization system must be selective in the content it collects and delivers to a content pool. A content personalization system cannot practically fetch all the content generated from millions of users and curators of social media sites. Fetching all the content from all users or curators of social media sites and the content therein is not practical or desired. Some curators in social media sites are more popular than others, obtain more traffic from visitors and post higher quality content. What is needed therefore is a system and method for identifying the top curators within a social media site and obtaining the best quality content from those sites.